South Bank Sky Arts Awards: vote for tomorrow’s stars

Share via

The nominees for The Times South Bank Breakthrough AwardTimes Photographers, David Bebber / James Glossop

Last updated at 12:01AM, February 9 2013

Could you be a star-maker? On March 12, the finest in British talent across
the arts will gather in London for the annual South Bank Sky Arts Awards,
and from today, Times readers can vote for the most promising young
artist of the past year. Chosen by Times critics, the nominees for The
Times South Bank Breakthrough Award come from across the arts spectrum,
from literature to dance, theatre to pop music. Last year’s winner, the
soprano Sophie Bevan, makes her Royal Opera House debut in May.

Our critics defend their nominations below — but who will win? That’s up to
you. Read the profiles below, then click the tab above to vote.

1 Books: Rachel Joyce
In late 2011 I picked up the proof of a novel to be published early in 2012. The
Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was the work of a 50-year-old radio
dramatist, but this was Joyce’s first book. There’s a reason that “I
couldn’t put it down” is a cliché — the ideas behind clichés are usually
true. Joyce’s tender, brave story of a man who risks everything for a
friendship and ends up saving his own life struck a chord with me and, it
turned out, readers worldwide. The book has sold more than 500,000 copies.
It was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott prize and longlisted for the Man
Booker, and on December 4 Joyce was named new writer of the year at the
Specsavers National Book Awards. Her new novel, Perfect, will be
published by Transworld in the spring. Erica Wagner

2 TV Drama: Tom Hiddleston
On the day of the 2011 Royal Wedding, the actor Hiddleston was told by
director Richard Eyre that he had been cast as Hal in The Hollow Crown,
the BBC films of Shakespeare’s best history cycle. A year later it was
Hiddleston, 32 today, who showed himself a prince for our times. With
impressive stage work in supporting roles already on his CV — Cymbeline,
Ivanov — and the superhero movie Thor under his utility
belt, his challenge was to prove himself a leading man. His acting duly won
us over to the cause of Harry, England and St George. This Hal was a
rebellious young man role-playing himself. He eventually found he had
become, and was not acting, Henry V. Woody Allen, who directed him as a
suave F. Scott-Fitzgerald in Midnight in Paris had already noticed
him. Now it was Television’s turn. Andrew Billen

3 Film: Sally El Hosaini
Director El Hosaini worked for six years on her debut feature My Brother
the Devil and the struggle paid off last year. The drama, about the
tough, complex lives of two British-Arab brothers living in East London, had
its premiere at Sundance and won the best cinematography prize. A month
later, El Hosaini won the best European film award at the Berlin Film
Festival, and by autumn the BFI gave her the best newcomer award.

El Hosaini is 36, and was born in Swansea and raised in Cairo before returning
to Wales. She worked for the BBC on documentaries, and has lived in Hackney
for ten years. She researched My Brother the Devil on her own estate,
and began filming during the 2011 riots. The film is atypical of the usual
drugs-and- gangs urban movie and has a surprising twist. El Hosaini’s next
projects include one set in London “in a completely different world to My
Brother the Devil”. Kate Muir

4 Rock/Pop: Chvrches
Chvrches are a unique Scottish three-piece who have a disarming way of
sounding like one thing while being something else entirely. On one level,
this is pop of the most synthetic variety: from singer Lauren Mayberry’s
sweet, digitally treated vocals to the ultra-catchy melody of first single The
Mother We Share, Chvrches (pronounced Churches) could get most pre-teen
crowds bopping away this summer. On another level there’s a lyrical
sophistication, informed partly by Mayberry’s recent masters dissertation on
feminist perspectives on women’s magazines, which underlines the shiny
harmonies and peppy beats. Consciously artificial, deceptively complex,
Chvrches are a rare example of futuristic depth in pure pop.Will Hodgkinson

5 Comedy: Sam Wills aka The Boy with Tape on His Face
At the Edinburgh Fringe last August, this physical comedian from Timaru, New
Zealand, packed one of the biggest rooms in town. You arrived wondering what
to expect — and left itching to tell your friends. Performing with a strip
of masking tape over his mouth, Wills ropes in volunteers to help on stunts
both spectacular and home-made, sustains his conceits with a quiet charisma
that matches his relentless inventiveness. He has just finished his first
West End run and we’ll be hearing his name plenty more, albeit not from his
lips. Dominic Maxwell

6 Dance: Tommy Franzén
Born in Sweden, Franzén came to Britain at the age of 19 to study and develop
a career as a hip-hop dancer. Now, at 32, he is one of the UK’s best-known
street dancers, thanks to the TV show So You Think You Can Dance and
the hit stage production Some Like It Hip Hop, which he starred in
and helped to create. An artist of extraordinary strength, agility and
boyish charisma, he proved with The Rodin Project last year that he
is helping to lead the way in bringing together street dance and
contemporary dance. “People want to pigeonhole me as a b-boy,” Franzén says.
“But I’m not a b-boy; I’m a dancer who does breaking.” Debra Craine

7 Classical: Benjamin Grosvenor
At 20, Grosvenor is the most mesmerising young pianist Britain has produced
for decades. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Music only last summer,
but already has played a concerto at the First Night of the Proms, won a
string of competitions and dazzled the critics. Born in Southend, Essex, he
is the youngest of five brothers and played his first concerto at 11. His
repertoire now includes everything from Bach and Scarlatti to Gershwin and
Britten. But what fascinates his fans is his exquisite touch and the sense
that, as he matures, he will unleash the turbulent emotions that can be
sensed just beneath his placid surface. Richard Morrison

8 Theatre: James Graham
Graham, 30, has been refining his craft as a playwright and screenwriter since
he won a Pearson Playwright bursary seven years ago, and has worked with the
Finborough, Bush, Soho and National Youth Theatre. His dazzling breakthrough
came last autumn, with the National Theatre transforming the Cottesloe into
the Commons chamber of 1974 for his witty, well researched play This House,
which evoked the sweaty manipulations in the Whip’s Office during Labour’s
desperate minority government. Graham was not even born at the time but
senior establishment and media figures who remember it were taken aback by
his imaginative accuracy and fine ear for dialogue. The play, which sold out
quickly, returns on the big Olivier stage, on February 23 and the National
Theatre has commissioned a second piece. Libby Purves

9 Opera: Elizabeth Llewellyn
You rarely get a second chance in opera, an industry always hankering after
the newest thing. Llewellyn, a soprano born and bred in South London, began
her career studying singing at the Royal Northern College of Music but
illness prompted her to leave music and she spent ten years in a
high-powered job in IT. Then an amateur group said she must give opera
another go. She was accepted into the Glyndebourne Chorus, then the National
Opera Studio. She won the 2009 Voice of Black Opera award and had a breakout
success at English National Opera as Mimì in La Bohème. Two
productions in 2012 have confirmed the promise spotted all those years ago.
Llewellyn was a lovely Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte for Opera
Holland Park, and then stole the show in English National Opera’s Carmen
as Micaëla. It takes courage to do what she’s done, but Llewellyn has pulled
it off in style. Neil Fisher

10 Visual art: Gerard Byrne
Taking as his subject anything from a Playboy magazine panel discussion
on sex to evidence for the Loch Ness monster, Dublin-born Byrne creates
playfully erudite video installations that mark him out as one of the most
intellectually ambitious and yet visually alluring artists working today.
His complex philosophies are enlivened by often hilarious cracks. But the
slow-burning power of his deadpan analysis is to make the spectator feel
that what might at first seem impenetrably complex can be simply a way to
look at the world afresh. Byrne asks his viewers to consider modes of
representation more scrupulously; to take more careful account of the gaps
between what we see and what we think we know. He has represented Ireland in
biennales from Venice to Sydney and his first big UK survey, now on at the
Whitechapel Gallery, marks his breakthrough moment. Rachel Campbell-Johnston